May Favourites

 Not many!

It was a busy month - a few extra days in work, and a friend staying so we went on a few outings. So I'm afraid I still haven't had time to do anything with photos from Paris. There's a culled but unedited album here - https://photos.app.goo.gl/4brZEY1At6UgA7yWA  

We had pretty much two full weeks of sunshine and bright sunny days - making it hard for our friend, who left Ireland 25 years ago, to remember what Irish weather can really be like, and also making it harder to spend time on photos - too warm and too bright. Normal weather has now resumed...

One of the things I did with Rod on a day that C was working was book a visit to Farmleigh House, something I'd always meant to get round to, and this was the perfect motivation. I must have picked something up when we were out shopping in the morning because when I went to get the bicycles out, mine had a totally flat tire. Luckily there was just time to replace the tube and still get there in time for the tour that we had booked. 

I'll add a couple of photos of the house, since there are plenty of the garden on the blog already.

The painted ceiling, if it's possible to click in and view it larger, has swallows flying around. It was painted when the Guinness of the time was confined to bed and unable to get out and about, so it brought the outdoors in. 

Example of book-binding

The blog header this month is a photo from last June, taken on the beach at St Georges de Didonne - one of the many sunsets we sat and watched. 

Botanics, the floral side

 

C likes the traditional bright yellow eschscholzia. I quite liked these pale yellow ones, and it was odd that only a handful were dotted so copiously with small flies.

We were lucky to be at the right time to see the handkerchief tree in full bloom.

This was a tall palm-like "tree" in the temeperate zone glass house, with leaves something like banana tree and a bloom amazing like Bird of Paradise, only much larger and less colourful. 

Along the coast

 I recently had to go for my annual medical check-up for work, and this time I made an afternoon appointment for after work. Knowing that I would have a little spare time I tucked my camera into my bag, and took a few photos on the way.

First up was the changed decor on this utility box - last year it displayed a Viking cycling along, a sheep looking through a porthole and the Pigeon Chimneys (as blogged here). This year it was totally different.

Shortly after that, you reach yacht club land, so I spotted this sign.

After that I reached Bull Island, a bird reserve and two golf links.  I cycled out to it along the second causeway, so between the two I spotted a couple of egrets and some shelduck.

As it was fairly overcast I didn't great photos on the reserve, but here are a couple. It was certainly lovely to feel sand beneath my feet and smell the tang of salt air. 

On the way back I spotted some more utility box art. I'm afraid the close-up didn't turn out well, and I can't remember if at that stage I was just using my phone because I needed to get home and get dinner cooked before going out again...I'm thinking it was just my phone at this stage. In any case, I also took a long shot to depict the setting, because just beyond the road is St. Anne's Park, and in fact there was a heron in the little pond/lake.

Since Saturday was a beautiful sunny morning with blue skies, and we were both awake early, we took a trip to the Botanic Gardens and I'll be along shortly with a recap of that. We were delighted to see a mandarin duck (they've been gone from the park for several years now) and a little grebe, plus a swan family with very young cygnets. 

Wild Lights (photo heavy)

I do have just a couple of cards to share later this week. November was NOT a productive month. I seemed to be busy with work, not doing much creating and sick both at the end of October and again now. We did go to Wild Lights in the Zoo this year, after having given the previous two events a miss, so here are some photos from that. The theme was biodiversity, and it was so well done. We both thoroughly enjoyed it and would almost go back again. 

This is a selection. If you want the full length show (well, not quite. I've culled it down from about 300 to 166 photos), there is an album HERE. In view of the fact that I still haven't had time to edit and upload any French photos, I decided to upload these unedited).